A local guy here has a Bally Eight Ball with Fonzie on the BG. It is in nice shape for a 1980 machine, limited wear on playfield and cabinet is good. Minor wear on BG, scratches more than flaking, but still presentable. He turned it on today for the first time in years and nothing. He says it worked the last time he used it. Opened the back box and Battery acid damage on the bottom of the board. I know little about these older pins. What is it worth? What will it probably need? Is the board repairable?

Let me know what suggestions you have.

What is it worth?

About 400-500$ if description is accurate.

What will it probably need?

At a minimum, a board job, power supply revision and an overall shop job.

Is the board repairable?

Can be, depending on the extent of the corrosion. If not, used MPUs and new replacement MPUs are available.

Eight Ball was released in 1977. Do you mean Eight Ball Deluxe?

This vintage of Bally machines are a pleasure to work on. You can purchase a corrosion repair kit from Great Plains Electronics. The worst part is removing the corroded components and repairing blown traces.

You'll likely also need to rebuild the HV section, upgrade the solenoid driver board and rebuild/upgrade the power supply. It's not difficult work, really. Clay's guides on this system are exceptional.

It' not hard to find board of bally that's all the same or you have to put soldering depending what you paid for this machine

Quoted from cooke

Eight Ball was released in 1977. Do you mean Eight Ball Deluxe?

No it is just Eight Ball, it is not deluxe.

I saw it tonight and the description is accurate Sparky.

As others already have said, these machines are easy to fix,
for the people who have experience and knowledge (and parts!).
Plus there is now a lot of documentation & parts available on the Net.

Price is usually heavily driven by cosmetical conditions.
From the limited description (BG scratched, some wear on PF,
not working with MPU corrosion), and without having seen pics,
the machine is worth anywhere between $250 - $400 in my opinion.

The full repair & shopping is usually quite involved however.
In addition to the corrosion on the MPU, often IC sockets need
to be changed on the MPU, plus connectors/pins on the power supply,
reflow all header pins of all boards, flipper rebuild, rubber ring kit,
leg levellers, clean & wax the playfield, new pinball, etc. etc.
A new replacement MPU can also be purchased too if required,
for about $250 I think.

This 1977 machine had the record production until more recently:
over 20,000 units in 1977. Quite a success !
(now, only Addams Family surpassed that production number).

Good luck !

Cheers,
- Sylvain.

sold one for $950.in average shape

So I picked up the Eight Ball Pin and set it up in my basement. Thanks to Bally Boy's advice and Clay's repair guide it now works again, it lives!!.   Got it going tonight.
In the end I replaced a few caps and resistors damaged by acid, F4 was blown and I repaired the acid damage to the PC board traces. It now needs to be shopped, one display, the pop bumpers and the solenoid that put the ball in play are the last issues to be dealt with. They are definitely much easier to work on than a WPC pin.

"They are definitely much easier to work on than a WPC pin." -HP5P

Yeah, you can say that again....... glad you got it going again!

I don't know what it is about that game, I really liked it as a kid, and although it's not very challenging - I still enjoy it today. It can't hurt that Happy Days was one of my favourite TV shows. Theme sometimes can go a long way.

Dan